Wright, D Sands

English

The Palimpsest

Moses Willard Bartlett

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Volume 13 | Number 1 Article 5
1-1-1932
Moses Willard Bartlett
D Sands Wright
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Wright, D S. "Moses Willard Bartlett." The Palimpsest 13 (1932), 25-35.
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Moses Willard Bartlett
Moses Willard Bartlett was born at Bath, New 
Hampshire, on February 26, 1834. Impelled by 
the impulse and will to teach, he prepared himself 
for his life work in Dartmouth College. Immedi­
ately upon his graduation in 1857, he was of­
fered a lucrative position in a mercantile firm in 
the East. To the disappointment of his would-be 
employers and of many of his friends, this proffer 
he rejected, and steadfastly sought his career in 
the less remunerative but, to him, more attractive 
engagements of the classroom and the college 
campus. For the privilege of guiding youth into 
the paths of wisdom and virtue, he gladly turned 
his back upon the common man’s aspiration for 
wealth and its concomitants — a sacrifice for the 
good of his fellows, as noble as it is rare.
His first professorial position was in Western 
College, located at Western, Iowa. There he 
taught for ten years and, during an interim, served 
for one year as acting president of the college. 
While at Western, he was married to Miss Julia 
Abbott, an accomplished woman who coura­
geously bore with him the hardships of pioneer­
ing. He served for six years as principal of 
Denmark Academy at Denmark, Iowa, and for
25
the five following years held a similar position in 
Scotland County Academy at Memphis, Missouri.
One of the first acts of the Board of Trustees of 
the Iowa State Normal School was the election of 
Professor Bartlett to the senior professorship of 
that institution. His culture and his reputation as 
an instructor in Iowa schools of higher learning 
made him the board’s logical choice for this honor. 
Practically all his college work was dedicated to 
the State of his adoption. He brought the culture 
of New England to Iowa during the adolescent 
period of the State’s development. Few people 
realize what a tremendous influence was exerted 
upon educational policies in Iowa by such men as 
Moses Willard Bartlett.
He was a gentleman of the old school. His 
accurate scholarship, his urbanity, his deference 
to his compeers, his freedom from ostentatious dis­
play, his familiarity with the man with the scepter 
and the man with the hoe marked him as one 
whose honor could be trusted always and whose 
friendship was a thing to be desired.
Though he chose to make his home and carve 
out his career in the West, still he was justly 
proud of his Yankee origin and he tenaciously ad­
hered to many of the idioms and provincialisms 
that during his childhood infixed themselves by 
force of habit into the warp and woof of his per-
26 THE PALIMPSEST
MOSES WILLARD BARTLETT 27
sonality. His pronunciation was not quite the 
“dollah” of the South, nor the “doller” of the 
Middle West, but was a medium between the two. 
His mountains were the “mountings” of Vermont. 
His tongue was free from slang, and he detested 
slang in others. His associates in the faculty often 
found themselves silently rebuked by the uncon­
scious expression of his face when they inadvert­
ently deviated from the approved forms of correct 
English. Yet he was never obtrusively critical 
nor sternly dogmatic as to the linguistic short­
comings of those about him.
Possessed of a fine sense of humor, he could 
employ his ready wit ever in a way that left no 
sting. Once in an audience he was speaking in a 
reminiscent way of his early experience as a 
teacher. He chanced to remark that he taught his 
first school at a salary of only twenty-five dollars 
per month. Henry Sabin, known in educational 
parlance as Iowa’s “Grand Old Man”, called out 
from the audience, “I can beat that story; my first 
salary was only twenty dollars a month.” “Oh 
yes”, retorted Bartlett, “I know that inferior 
teachers received less.” In the laughing that fol­
lowed none joined more heartily than Sabin.
Professor Bartlett was originally chosen by the 
Board of Trustees to head the Department of 
English Language and Literature, and as such he
28 THE PALIMPSEST
was advertised in the first circular of the institu­
tion. The trustees proposed, but this time Princi­
pal Gilchrist disposed. In the first assignments to 
service by the principal, the mathematical subjects 
were entrusted to Professor Bartlett and the 
English courses to his associate, D. S. Wright. 
This arrangement prevailed during the first four 
years of the institution. At the beginning of the 
fifth year, the Board voted to return to their orig­
inal plan, and transferred the senior professor to 
the chair of English Language and Literature. 
In this position he served for twenty-four addi­
tional years when, because of advancing years, he 
retired from educational work in June, 1904.
In the seventies, the parlor reading circle was a 
fad, ardently fostered in practically all the larger 
towns of the State. The Cedar Falls Parlor 
Reading Circle was instituted in 1875, antedating 
by one year the coming of the Normal School to 
that city. It met from time to time in the parlors 
of the well-to-do people who possessed literary 
taste or pretensions to the same. Duly officered 
with a president, a vice-president, a secretary, a 
treasurer, and an executive committee of three, it 
was regarded as one of the most important social 
and intellectual organizations in town. Studies 
were outlined in the lives and works of great 
writers, in the world’s products, and in the manual

MOSES WILLARD BARTLETT 29
arts. With the opening of the Normal School in 
the autumn of 1876, the new faculty was wel­
comed into the Circle. To the literary proficiency 
and taste of Professor Bartlett the atmosphere of 
the Circle was most congenial. Some men are 
born literary leaders, some achieve such leader­
ship, and some have the distinction thrust upon 
them. To all three classes, Professor Bartlett be­
longed.
Admitted to membership in the Circle, he became 
immediately its lion. Ministers deferred to his 
literary judgment and the city superintendent, 
principal, and high school teachers revised their 
opinions when he delivered his dicta as to the 
supremacy of Butler’s Analogy or the literary 
shortcomings of J. G. Holland and E. P. Roe. 
For many years he served as president of the 
Circle, and the impress of his personality is still 
felt in the city. While the reading circle fad has 
had its day and has passed its age of usefulness in 
most communities, the Cedar Falls Circle is still a 
flourishing organization. It has survived the 
storms of fifty-six Iowa winters and still shows 
no mark of decadence. Perhaps the impact of 
Professor Bartlett’s personality is a partial expla­
nation of the secret of its longevity.
After the “most straitest sect’ he was a Chris­
tian, a communicant of the Congregational
30 THE PALIMPSEST
Church. He believed and lived the religion that 
he professed. As a lay preacher, he occasionally 
occupied the pulpits of his own and other 
churches, and always to the edification of his con­
gregation. His greatest sermon was the life he 
lived, for he was “a living epistle known and read 
of all men”. In his school relations, he inspired 
his students to walk not only in the ways of the 
wisdom of books, but also in the paths of right­
eousness; and his students in turn loved, followed, 
and strove to reproduce his Christian character in 
the schools of the State.
Though his schoolroom work was first in his 
thought and effort, he was not forgetful of other 
calls to duty. He was a patriot, and a pioneer in 
the prohibition movement. A Republican in poli­
tics, he was always in the caucus of his party, and 
staunchly stood for whatever policies or candi­
dates he approved. When the campaign was on, 
with voice and pen he sought to promote the glory 
of the land and flag he loved.
In December of 1885, the members of the Iowa 
State Teachers Association bestowed upon him 
the high honor of the presidency of that organiza­
tion. The paragraph below, from his presidential 
address, is an index to his character and faith:
“No foreign power, by its armed soldiery, can 
injure this republic; our dangers are within, and
MOSES WILLARD BARTLETT 31
from ignorance and defective or wrong education. 
Experience shows that it is not enough that the 
laborer be skillful in his work, that his hand merely 
be trained to a deft handling of the spade, the 
chisel, or the steam engine; the laborer is still a 
man, with human wants and desires, to be quali­
fied, endowed with reason, by which he should be 
controlled.”
Professor Bartlett’s classroom methods were 
distinctly Socratic — in the opinion of some exces­
sively so. Woe unto the student in his class who 
erroneously answered one of his well-put ques­
tions. Upon receiving the answer he would look 
edified and proceed to ask other questions perti­
nent to the reply, until his unwary victim found 
himself entangled in a mass of absurdities from 
which there was no escape but in the acknowledg­
ment of his mistake. The lesson was often severe, 
but one most thoroughly and indelibly learned.
The twenty-ninth of January, 1904, is a mem­
orable date in the annals of the Iowa State Normal 
School. It marked the occasion of a double all­
day celebration; first, the completion by Professor 
Bartlett of fifty years of service as a teacher; 
second, his approaching retirement from the State 
Normal School, after twenty-eight years of con­
tinuous work in its faculty. In the forenoon Dr. 
Thomas McClelland, president of Knox College,
32 THE PALIMPSEST
who had received his own inspiration for a suc­
cessful professional career from the man whom he 
had come to Cedar Falls to honor, delivered a 
speech on the theme of “Fifty Years of Service”.
The afternoon was devoted to a series of plat­
form addresses. First came “The Founding of 
the State Normal School ’, by Hon. H. C. Hemen- 
way, who as State Senator from Black Hawk 
County had been most influential in securing the 
establishment of the school at Cedar Falls and 
who became the first chairman of the board of 
trustees. Then followed in chronological se­
quence, “The Early Days of the Normal School”, 
by D. S. Wright. “The Normal School and the 
State” was the subject chosen by Hon. E. D. 
Chassell, an early graduate of the school and for 
three terms an active member of the General As­
sembly of the State. This was followed by “The 
Schoolmaster of Fifty Years Ago”, by Henry 
Sabin. And at the close of the program came the 
valedictory address by Professor Bartlett.
“A poor Jew, it is said, prided himself on help­
ing to build the temple at Jerusalem, because he 
was allowed to help, once or twice, in lifting a 
stone to its place in the foundation. My friends, 
I have been present, for a time, when the founda­
tions were being laid of the lives of many hun­
dreds of my fellow beings, and among them are
MOSES WILLARD BARTLETT 33
two who have honored us by their presence and 
good words today, and if I have been fortunate 
enough to help to place even one small stone of 
value in any one of such lives, I count it of more 
worth than if I had conceived and built entire the 
most beautiful material temple the world ever 
saw.” That was the tenor of his whole speech.
In the course of the addresses on this occasion, 
a classical poetical quotation was given as appro­
priate to the personality of the man of the hour.
Genteel in personage.
Conduct, and equipage:
Noble by heritage,
Generous and free.
Brave, not romantic,
Learned, not pedantic,
Frolic, not frantic,
All this is he.
Honor maintaining,
Meanness disdaining,
Still entertaining,
Engaging and new.
Neat but not finical,
Sage but not cynical,
Never tyrannical,
But ever true.
In the college paper, which recorded the events 
of this great day, appeared another tribute.
34 THE PALIMPSEST
"Three years ago", said Professor Colegrove to 
his class in school management, "I was teaching in 
the institute at Marengo, Iowa. One evening 
when I was sitting out in the yard at my boarding 
place, a man came up the street, just the other side 
of the fence. He stopped near me, leaned on the 
picket fence, and said, Are you Mr. Colegrove 
from Cedar Falls?’
"I said, ‘Yes, sir.’
'And do you know Professor Bartlett?’
“ I do, very well,’ I replied.
“ Well, when you see him, will you give him 
my love.’
“ I shall be very glad to do so’, I said. ‘You 
know Professor Bartlett, then?’
Yes’, said the gentleman, I do. Thirty years 
ago, he was my teacher, and all through these 
years, he has been to me the ideal of what a man 
ought to be. I can not tell you how much I owe to 
him, how completely he changed my life, and how 
thoroughly I respect him.’
‘‘After some further conversation, he turned to 
go away, when I said to him, ‘You have not given 
me your name, and I do not have the pleasure of 
your acquaintance.’
‘‘ ‘My name is Rumple’, he answered.
“ ‘Oh, you are the Congressman from this dis­
trict’, I said, as I recognized the name.
MOSES WILLARD BARTLETT 35
“ ‘Yes sir. Good evening’, he said and went 
away.”
Mr. Colegrove added, “Of course it was a 
great pleasure to me to give the Congressman’s 
message to Professor Bartlett when I returned to 
Cedar Falls; and I shall never forget how pleased 
and happy he looked as he said, “Well, it is 
worth while to be a teacher’.”
Professor Bartlett was in disposition one of the 
most retiring of men. He avoided the limelight. 
Though ready of speech, he sought no reputation 
as a platform speaker. He wielded a graceful pen, 
writing with faultless diction and with Addisonian 
precision. In press and pulpit he was a fearless 
champion of righteousness and temperance. To 
the State he brought a high cultural standard.
In June, 1904, he retired from the active service 
of the School and the State. The remaining eight 
years of his life he spent in the home of Austin 
Burt, environed by the assiduous care of his 
daughter, Mrs. Mary Bartlett Burt, happy in the 
love and laughter of his grandchildren and the 
companionship of the books he loved. He calmly 
met the messenger that comes to all; and on the 
thirtieth of November, 1912, he peacefully re­
signed his body to mother earth and his spirit unto 
God who gave it.
D. Sands W right


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